Trustees postpone action on CSU fee hike proposal

LONG BEACH -- A plan to establish three new student fees was put on hold by the California State University board of trustees Tuesday.

Bob Linscheid of Chico, the board's chairman, said he decided to remove the proposal from the agenda after talking to Gov. Jerry Brown and others about the matter. He said he realized many students opposed the proposal.

The governor, who was at Tuesday's meeting, thanked Linscheid for postponing action on the plan.

Linscheid said the purpose of the fee plan was to "free up space" in classes for more students. That's still an important goal, he said.

The proposed fees, which would have taken effect next fall, included a per-unit fee of $372 for "super seniors" who have accumulated 160 semester units or more.

The proposal included two other fees. Students who took 18 units or more in a semester would pay $180 for the 18th unit and for each unit in addition to that. Students who repeated courses would have to pay $91 for every unit repeated. Students would be able to request exemptions from the fees under the plan.

The new fees were proposed by staff at the CSU Chancellor's Office as a way to discourage students from becoming "super seniors" and from repeating classes and taking heavy course loads.

The idea is to help current students get the classes they need and allow more new students to be admitted to the CSU's 23 campuses, staff said.

On Monday, a group called CSU Students for Quality Education protested the fee proposal as unfair and said it would cost students money and cause some to stay in school longer to get their degrees.

Mike Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for the CSU, said trustees want to study the fee proposal further before reconsidering it.

He said he thought students and others had a lot of misconceptions about the plan.

The idea wasn't to make most students pay more money, he said. It was to address the problem of students who could graduate but instead chose to stay in school for a variety of reasons.

During a briefing for reporters last week, CSU assistant vice chancellor Eric Forbes said each year 20,000 to 30,000 eligible students can't be admitted to the university system because there is no room in classes.

About 9,000 of the CSU's 425,000 students are "super seniors," said Robert Turnage, another assistant vice chancellor. He said each year about 40,000 students repeat classes, and each term about 22,000 take 18 units or more.

In 10 years, tuition in the CSU has tripled and "state funding has been radically reduced," Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement praising the decision to table the fee proposal. "We must find solutions that end the vicious cycle of drastic cuts and fee hikes."

Staff writer Larry Mitchell can be reached at 896-7759 or lmitchell@chicoer.com or followed on Twitter, @LarryMitchell7.